Yesterday (May 6), Childish Gambino put the country in straight awe with the debut of the visual to his track, “This Is America.” And, it was only less than 24 hours after the actor/rapper hosted and performed at Saturday Night Live as Donald Glover, where he dramatized Kanye West in a memorable skit, A Quiet Place. The visual served the palpable reality of being black in America, with gun violence and police brutality as the focal point.
The widely praised video starts off with a acoustic guitar player, who is a black man, peacefully playing his tune, with Gambino grooving to the beat and the merry moment between the hooded guitar player and Gambino quickly turned into a rage of slaughter as the rapper mouths out, “This is America. Don’t catch yo slippin’ up.” He immediately reverts back to the groove and is joined by dancing school kids, exposing a truth regarding the attention span of the masses.
The symbolism in “This is America” is at large. Gambino blatantly tackles local terrorism in faced by blacks in America best known to be in ties with the brutal acts of the America police force and American gun culture. As riots suffocate the background with frantic bodies running swiftly, ranging from the black youth to the gun ruling American police force, Gambino and his dance crew continue to groove, purposefully ignoring the violence around them which is telling about the true “wokeness” of the majority of Americans, at most the black youth.
After flowing through what is now the average chaotic American town, Gambino slides his way into a church while the choir is in praise and puts The Charleston Church massacre into affect, which was a given in representation of gun violence plagued by non-blacks upon blacks in America.
Overall, Gambino is staged as the average working class African American, who despite how civil one can be, the black man in America must remain on his p’s and q’s at all times, even if that means actually owning a gun and going all out for the sake of maintaining his life.
Sza makes a cameo during the last 60 seconds of the visual, which is highly suggestive that there just might be another song underway. The songstress is seen plopped on top of 80s hooptie, silently poised.
What has Childish Gambino done? The conversation of gun violence has re surged, as it is nearly impossible for anyone with a pair of working eyes to be oblivious to the blatant message being allocated.
Watch Childish Gambino’s mind-raising visual to “This Is America,” below.
